Categorie: Israel

The Ministerial Conference in Poland on Peace and Security in the Middle East addressed but one important issue and this issue was not on the agenda. At the conference, Israël publicly demonstrated that it had relations with Arab States – the representatives of these countries engaging in conversations inter se. This is remarkable because officially, there are no diplomatic relations between these states.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exploited the US House of Representatives’ vote against the war in Yemen to reveal its military hand in this conflict.

If the truth be known, right at the beginning of this war in Yemen, troops from Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Israel took part. These three states set up a joint general staff in Somaliland. The latter is not recognized as a state and is controlled by Israel. This war had been the subject of several years of negotiation between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Its objective was to exploit the oil reserves in the “desert of Rub-Al Khali”, the area straddling Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Further exploitation will take place through a joint project in the Horn of Africa.

For Israel, showing its hand in Yemen follows on from its public recognition of its incessant interventions in Syria. This amounts to a rewriting of History, for prior to the Israeli interventions, there were no Iranians – either in Syria or Yemen.

For the United States, this revelation is another step towards the establishment of a Judeo-Sunnite alliance against the Shiites, as announced by US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo.

About sixty foreign delegates participated in this show and reacted as if comatosed. The Western Press has not deemed this conference to be newsworthy.

Israel and a coalition of Arab countries are in talks “in order to advance the common interest of war with Iran”, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said using word that means “war,” but also “fight” and “struggle.”

The promise of a major conflict in the Middle East was floated by the Israeli leader during his trip to Warsaw.

“From here I am going to a meeting with 60 foreign ministers and envoys of countries from around the world against Iran,” Netanyahu said as quoted by Jerusalem Post.

“What is important about this meeting – and this meeting is not in secret, because there are many of those – is that this is an open meeting with representatives of leading Arab countries, that are sitting down together with Israel in order to advance the common interest of war with Iran.”

The US delegation is headed by Vice President Mike Pence, who is accompanied by vocal Iran hawk Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and advisor. The Anti-Iranian goals of Israel and the US are apparently dominating the agenda of the forum.

“We’re trying to expand the number of nations who are engaged and have a stake in the future of a peaceful and prosperous Middle East,” Brian Hook, the State Department’s special representative for Iran, told Reuters.

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The EU is on a shaky ground vis-a-vis Iran as it’s member Poland hosts the meeting. The Europeans are attempting to resist the push for confrontation with Iran coming from Washington, hoping to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran. The Iranians still stick to the terms of the agreement even after US scrapped it under the Trump administration, but the promise of lucrative business opportunities with the EU, which was a major part of the incentive for Tehran to accept the deal, are nowhere near to materializing under the threat of American sanctions.

“Today, the Iranian people see some European countries as cunning and untrustworthy along with the criminal America. The government of the Islamic Republic must carefully preserve its boundaries with them,” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned ahead of the gathering in Warsaw.

Observers have been struggling to find an historical comparison for the War on Syria since it first broke out over 8 years ago, and while the conflict is veritably a unique one in its own right, the best comparison that can be made to its current phase over the past couple of years is Laos because of how “Israel’s” ongoing secret war on the Mideast country in the New Cold War somewhat mirrors the former campaign that the US waged on the Southeast Asian state in the Old Cold War.

The “Worst-Kept Secret” In The Mideast

Netanyahu just acknowledged that “Israel” was responsible for the latest bombing attack on Syria earlier this week when his armed forces shelled a hill, observation post, and hospital near the occupied Golan Heights in response to what he said was “Iran and its attempts to entrench itself in the region”, specifically reminding the world that “Israel’s” forces literally “operate every day” on this front.

His remarkable chutzpah confirms what the former “IDF” chief revealed last month about how “Israel” “struck thousands of targets without claiming responsibility or asking for credit” on a “near-daily” basis, which was already more or less known to the world as the Mideast’s “worst-kept secret” after the Russian Ministry of Defense practically said as much after the tragic mid-September downing of its spy plane in Syria.

RT reported at the time that the Ministry’s spokesman Igor Konashenkov said that “[Israel’s] jets carried out more than 200 strikes against targets located in Syria over the past 18 months alone”, which would conservatively average out to at least one attack every two and a half days or so. Interestingly enough, Iranian Foreign Minster Zarif told the world about this well over half a year before Russia did when he accused“Israel” in February 2018 of “mass reprisals against its neighbours and daily incursions into Syria, Lebanon”, which the author admittedly thought was a gross exaggeration for perception management purposes but now humbly accepts that it was the closest public representation of the truth at the time. The question therefore arises of why neither Russia nor Syria touched upon this before then, but the answers might be “politically inconvenient” for most of the Alt-Media Community.

You might imagine that a report by a multinational observer force documenting a 20-year reign of terror by Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers against Palestinians, in a city under occupation, would provoke condemnation from European and US politicians.

But you would be wrong. The leaking in December of the report on conditions in the city of Hebron, home to 200,000 Palestinians, barely caused a ripple.

About 40,000 separate cases of abuse had been quietly recorded since 1997 by dozens of monitors from Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Italy and Turkey. Some incidents constituted war crimes.

Exposure of the confidential report has now provided the pretext for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to expel the international observers. He shuttered their mission in Hebron this month, in apparent violation of Israel’s obligations under the 25-year-old Oslo peace accords.

Israel hopes once again to draw a veil over its violent colonisation of the heart of the West Bank’s largest Palestinian city. The process of clearing tens of thousands of inhabitants from central Hebron is already well advanced.

Any chance of rousing the international community into even minimal protest was stamped out by the US last week. It blocked a draft resolution at the United Nations Security Council expressing “regret” at Israel’s decision, and on Friday added that ending the mandate of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) was an “internal matter” for Israel.

The TIPH was established in 1997 after a diplomatic protocol split the city into two zones, controlled separately by Israel and a Palestinian Authority created by the Oslo accords.

The “temporary” in its name was a reference to the expected five-year duration of the Oslo process. The need for TIPH, most assumed, would vanish when Israel ended the occupation and a Palestinian state was built in its place.

While Oslo put the PA formally in charge of densely populated regions of the occupied territories, Israel was effectively given a free hand in Hebron to entrench its belligerent hold on Palestinian life.

Several hundred extremist Jewish settlers have gradually expanded their illegal enclave in the city centre, backed by more than 1,000 Israeli soldiers. Many Palestinian residents have been forced out while the rest are all but imprisoned in their homes.

Palestinians in the Netherlands will for the first time be able to list the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem as their place of birth, in part because of the Dutch policy that Israel has no sovereignty over those areas.

Dutch State Secretary Raymond Knops informed the House of Representatives in The Hague of the change on Friday, explaining the decision was based on “the Dutch viewpoint that Israel has no sovereignty over these areas,” and the fact that the Netherlands doesn’t recognize Palestinian sovereignty.

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Natives of these areas who are living in the Netherlands currently have two options when specifying their birthplace at the Dutch civil registry – ‘Israel’ or ‘Unknown’. The ‘Unknown’ option was only added in 2014, following protests seeking fairer options.

These options apply to Palestinians born after May 15, 1948, when the state of Israel was established.

While natives now resident in the Netherlands are still excluded from simply listing Palestine as their place of birth, they will now be able to use the name of the territory they were born in.

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The Netherlands does not recognize Palestinian sovereignty so the move is seen as a positive step people identifying as being from there. While the UN and 136 countries do recognize Palestine as a sovereign state, many EU countries are said to be waiting for this to be established as part of a peace agreement in the region.

Knops said the categories added are based on United Nations Security Council resolutions and the Oslo Accords.

Sharon, who was then Israel’s prime minister, told fellow members of the Likud party in 2003 that a political solution to the conflict with the Palestinians was necessary because “the idea that we can continue holding under occupation — and it is occupation, you might not like this word, but it’s really an occupation — to hold 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation is, in my opinion, a very bad thing for us and for them.”

Of course, Ariel Sharon was eventually succeeded as Israel’s leader by the man who sat silently to his right during that news conference, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the current Israeli prime minister has led the way in making a very opposite case: that the territories Israel conquered in 1967 are not occupied at all. Netanyahu recently told members of his party that speaking of describing lands that have either been annexed by Israel or will remain under its control forever as “‘the occupation,’ is nonsense.”

While right-wing Israelis prefer to say that the land where they rule a Palestinian population that is denied basic civil rights is contested, the occupation is a fact under international law, and is routinely referred to that way left-wing Israelis.

So what explains the skittishness of the American political establishment, both Democrat and Republican, to be as candid about using the word occupation now as Israel’s ultranationalist leader was in 2003? That question has been particularly evident since the election of a handful of young Democrats — Representatives Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York — openly critical of the occupation, unafarid to call it what it is, and supportive of measures to end it, like the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. All three Congresswomen have been attacked by Republicans and members of their own party for denouncing the occupation as a humanitarian and moral outrage akin to Jim Crow segregation in the United States or apartheid in South Africa.

Their outspoken support for Palestinian rights — which reflects a growing unease among young American progressives with unconditional support for an increasingly far-right Israel — has even prompted a new group,

Some state governments are legislating against the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

This post first appeared on Russia Insider

The ACLU thinks boycotts are speech. So do some federal courts. They think all of the anti-BDS legislation being adopted by state governments of late is unconstitutional. They’re wrong. Although boycotts may be symbolic of an idea or a principle, or may contain some latent political message, almost all actions can be understood in this way. All actions can’t be constitutionally protected free expression, however.

This is to say nothing about the wisdom of the many anti-BDS state laws currently cropping up all over America, which prevent government contractors, affiliates, and those receiving state funds or support, from boycotting Israel. It should be noted that these state governments can not discriminate against those who merely advocate for boycotting Israel or Israeli goods. Nor can they demand that contractors or like parties sign loyalty oaths to Israel, or anything to this effect. Such laws would be clear First Amendment violations.

Until few weeks ago, there was an undeclared war that Israel had waged on Iran in Syria to force Iranian presence out the country. While the war was officially ‘undeclared’, various pronouncements by the top-rank Israeli officials confirmed that there was a war going-on in Syria. However, a number of statements made by Israeli officials would indicate that the war is going. “We struck thousands of targets without claiming responsibility or asking for credit”, said Gadi Eizenkot, the recently retired IDF Chief of General Staff, in an interview with the New York Times that he gave days before his retirement. The central objective of this undeclared air-war, the General explained, has been to ‘degrade’ the Iranian forces in Syria so that they are pre-empted from directly attacking Israel. And, even if they do attack at some point in future, this war undeclared war would make sure that they are beaten comprehensively. In so doing, the damage i.e., damaging the enemy’s capabilities, done through this undeclared war would play a crucial role.

Israel, by attacking Iran in Syria, is therefore only preparing for the war that is yet to come. Repeated Israeli strikes, like the one carried out few days ago, are accordingly only a practical manifestation of this strategy of “war between wars”, cod-named “Operation Chess.”

Israel believes that the war is necessary to break the Iranian expansion in and beyond the region. Thus the General explained, “We operated under a certain threshold until two-and-a-half years ago”, and after that “we noticed a significant change in Iran’s strategy. Their vision was to have significant influence in Syria by building a force of up to 100,000 Shiite fighters from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. They built intelligence bases and an air force base within each Syrian air base. And they brought civilians in order to indoctrinate them”, leading Israel to boost their campaign, making aerial attacks a nearly daily event. For instance, in 2018 alone, the air force dropped about 2,000 bombs on Iranian targets in Syria.

On December 26, Israel’s primer minister, Netanyahu, confirmed to Israeli air-cadets that Israel is acting against Iranian entrenchment in Syria “continuously and with firmness, including during the current period”, adding further that a possible US withdrawal from Syria doesn’t change the Israeli policy.

Now, Benny Gantz is your typical Israeli Zionazi nutcase with all that entails, but this can hardly be said of James Baker who was one of the most educated and brilliant diplomats the USA ever produced. So what’s this thing about bringing those who dare defy the AngloZionist Empire back to the “stone age”. Coincidence? You tell me!

I sure don’t think so.

The Israeli butchery in Gaza enjoyed the massive support of the Israeli people who even organized special “viewing locations” for the joy of seeing Palestinian civilians (the vast majority of the people the Israelis murdered in Gaza) massacred. Which is not very different from the way the US Americans (and their European vassals) organized “viewing locations” in their TV sets for the joy of seeing Iraqi civilians (the vast majority of the people the USA and its vassals murdered in Iraq) massacred. The difference is only in numbers: in Gaza the Israelis only murdered “only” about 1500 Palestinians whereas the USA can pride itself on having massacred well over a million Iraqis.

Intelligence sources said “Israel wants Syria to return to the era before 2011 when the leaders of the country were less powerful and experienced than they are today after seven years of warfare, the delivery of Russian advanced equipment mostly for air defence, the supply and manufacturer of sophisticated Iranian missiles in Syria and the formative presence of Iranian and Hezbollah advisors”.

The sources reveal that “Israeli officials told their American counterparts that it would be inappropriate to withdraw forces from the northeast of Syria, leaving Iran and its allies behind. The withdrawal – which now seems partial – of US forces should be done, if not before, at least simultaneously with the departure of all foreign forces operating on Syrian soil to create a balance of power on the ground. Also, it is important to stipulate that President Bashar al-Assad must refrain from using his mid-range precision missiles against Israel any time in the future as part of any US withdrawal from Syria deal. Israel argued that the US is delivering the Levant to Russia and the ‘Axis of the Resistance’ without any concessions in return”, according to the source.

The US establishment seems unwilling to cater to Israeli’s exaggerated anxieties. US officials visiting Tel Aviv told local officials that “the Israeli army holds enough military power to defend itself and that since 1974 Israel has no longer been on the defensive in the region. On the contrary, Israel has been on the offensive, taking the initiative to attack targets in Syria during these seven years of war”. According to western officials, the US reminded Israel that thousands of American forces are based in the country, in the Mediterranean and in various military bases the Middle East. These can intervene in favour of Israel in a timely way whenever appropriate. Therefore, Israel should stop screaming for unneeded help, when it is the one inflicting damage on its adversaries”.

Israel has repeatedly bombed targets in Syria belonging to the Syrian army and the “Axis of the Resistance”. It pushed the red lines even further when it bombed Iranian officials at the T4 airbase in 2018, killing several Iranian officers. In 2019, Israel already bombed a warehouse at Damascus airport, hours after the off-loading of Iranian military cargo.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu famously was unaware that he was being filmed when he commented that “America is a thing you can move very easily, moved in the right direction.” His predecessor Ariel Sharon was even more to the point when he reportedly said “Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that …don’t worry about American pressure; I tell you, we, the Jewish people, control America and the American people know it!”

If this were only chest thumping rhetoric one might just shrug and go about one’s business, but actions speak louder than words, even in the world of corrupt politicians, where nothing is ever as it seems to be. In the past year alone, the U.S. government has moved its Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, has stopped criticizing the Netanyahu government’s expansion of illegal settlements, and is reportedly currently contemplating recognizing as legal Israel’s illegal occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights. All the moves were and are contrary to actual American interests.

Furthermore, Israel, a country having a European level standard of living to include free education and medical care, has received more than $250 billion in “aid” from Washington. It currently is receiving $3.8 billion yearly from the U.S. Treasury as a base figure guaranteed for ten years, with supplements for special projects and programs. Adding in trade arrangements favorable to Israel and the money it gets from American Jewish donors’ tax-exempt contributions, the real total per annum approaches and may even exceed $10 billion. Much of the donor money, including that from the Kushner Foundation, has gone to fund the illegal settlements on the West Bank in violation of U.S. law. And then there is the $2.7 billion given yearly to Egypt and Jordan, essentially bribes to maintain friendly relations with Israel.

The ultimate irony is that any aid to Israel is illegal in light of the fact that it has violated the Symington and Glenn amendments to the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act due to its undeclared nuclear weapons arsenal and its refusal to sign the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. Both Congress and the White House have chosen to ignore that complication,

On Christmas Day, Tsahal has managed to strike a land target in Damascus. And how? By using two passenger planes flying over Lebanon as shields for their bombings. Both the Syrian and the Russian etats majors confirmed this at the same time.

Syria would not have been able to strike down the Israeli bomber planes without putting the lives of the passengers on the civil flights in danger. An analogous event occurred on 17 September 2018 with a Russian military observation plane.

In Beirut, the Lebanese Minister for Public Works, Youssef Fenianos, has confirmed that they had escaped a “genuine catastrophe”.

Israel had fired 16 “made in the US” GBU-39 bombs with laser guidance, from 6 F-16 airplanes. Two had struck their targets: Hezbollah officials who were boarding a special plane to attend a funeral in Iran and a Syrian military complex.

Penetrating Lebanese airspace illegally and using civil planes as shields constitute serious violations of international law.

All the pieces were in place for it to happen sooner than later, but striking Syria on Christmas night sent a terrifying message that’s sure to backfire against “Israel” but will probably also get people to wonder why the S-300s didn’t deter this from happening in the first place.

Reports are streaming in that “Israel” launched an attack against Syria on Christmas night after a brief hiatus of a couple of months following what President Putin previously described as the “chain of tragic circumstances” that led to the downing of a Russian spy plane over the Arab Republic’s airspace in mid-September. Many people are shocked by the audacity of striking Syria on one of the world’s holiest days but a lot of those who have also been following the country’s conflict lately are surprised that it even happened at all.

Certain forces in the Mainstream and Alternative Medias pushed forth the narrative that Russia’s highly publicized dispatch of S-300 anti-air missiles to Syria in the aftermath of the mid-September incident was supposed to have made this scenario impossible, though the reality is that the Russian military has yet to hand control of these systems over to the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and might ultimately never end up doing so as part of a possible backroom deal between Moscow and Tel Aviv in order for “Israel” to continue having the so-called “freedom” to strike IRGC and Hezbollah positions in the country at its convenience.

Those same voices who said that this wouldn’t ever happen again tended to also gloss over the developments of the past few weeks which saw Russia and “Israel” publicly set aside their largely exaggerated differences since September by exchanging high-level military delegations and agreeing to once again cooperate with one another. Coming in the immediate run-up to Trump’s decision to initiate the US’ conventional on-the-ground withdrawal from Syria, the writing was on the wall that “Israel” would soon resume its bombing operations in the country at America’s behest.

One of the Mideast’s worst kept “secrets” is that Russia passively facilitated over 200 of these same bombings from January 2017 to September 2018 by the admission of its own Defense Ministry following the aforementioned midair incident that tragically downed its spy plane,

In recent weeks, racism against Palestinian people and the expansion of apartheid-Jim Crow policies have escalated. The Israeli lobby and its supporters attacked freedom of speech in the United States, showing how far they will go to prevent the US public from being aware of their behavior.

If more people in the US become aware of the truth about Israel’s genocidal policies, the economic lifeline and political protection of the United States will disappear. Israel could be forced to make significant changes that recognize the human rights and self-determination of Palestinians.

Israel knows that without the support of the United States, it could not continue these crimes against the Palestinian people. The lesson for US activists: keep telling the truth about Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine.

“The Israeli army has enough bullets for every Palestinian.”

That is what the Chair of the Defense Committee of the Israeli Parliament, Avi Dichter, threatened last week. He was commenting on the Great March of Return protests that took place along the eastern fence of the Gaza Strip. Saying Israel has enough bullets for every Palestinian is saying Israel could kill every Palestinian, the definition of ethnic cleansing.

Dichter is not a fringe backbencher but a senior member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party. This former director of the Shin Bet internal security service and Minister of Internal Security said that the Israeli army is prepared to use all means to stop Palestinians.

And, the Strategic Affairs Minister, Gilad Erdan, repeatedly referred to Palestinians killed in Gaza as “Nazis.” Killing Palestinians was acceptable, because “The number [of peaceful Palestinian protesters] killed does not mean anything because they are just Nazis anyhow.”

The full Tablet series featuring Paul Berman’s original three-part essay on the state of the contemporary Left, along with responses to Berman from writers across the political spectrum, is collected here.

Paul Berman warns of a Western Left characterized by an irrational hatred of Israel, a reflexive blame-America posture, and a blind eye to Islamist fanaticism. In response to this perceived plague, he calls for a “preliminary charge” by progressives of conscience against “anti-Zionists and the Farrakhanites and any lingering Chavistas”, along with movements like BDS and individual leaders like Jeremy Corbyn.

I don’t accept Berman’s underlying presumptions, and hence see his warnings as misplaced. Let’s start with his most influential contemporary target. Berman approvingly cites the consensus of UK Jewish organizations that “a culture of classic anti-Semitism [has] taken root” inside Corbyn’s Labour Party. But is that factual? No one has been able to disprove the conclusion of Labour’s internal review, which found that cases of anti-Semitism within the party’s ranks represent “less than 0.1 percent” of Labour’s members.

But I am admittedly biased. I happen to admire Corbyn’s unapologetic opposition to neoliberal economics and advocacy for a more just, humane society. I also admire Corbyn for being, in the words of the Israeli writer Gideon Levy, “a staunch, consistent opponent of Israel’s occupation policy.” To Levy, opposing that occupation is not only Corbyn’s “right; as a true leftist it’s his duty.”

It is Corbyn’s consistent and principled fulfillment of that duty that I believe explains why he has been labeled an anti-Semite. His foes are following an old playbook: Defenders of the Israeli government have long cheapened the meaning of the term “anti-Semitism” and the memory of the Holocaust by deploying both as weapons to silence defenders of Palestinian rights. It is striking that Corbyn’s detractors, like Berman, see no irony in attacking him for appearing at an event with Hajo Meyer, an Auschwitz survivor. At the event, not Corbyn but Meyer himself criticized the exploitation of Nazi crimes to launder Israeli crimes,

George Bush at White House press conference September 12, 1991, defending his move to hold up loan guarantees to Israel. He said he was “one lonely little guy” against “powerful political forces.”

In 1991 President George H.W. Bush held up a $10 billion loan guarantee to Israel over Israel’s continued settlement building. Bush won the battle, but eventually lost the war, a lesson that politicians have remembered ever since…

The Israeli newspaper states that Bush “made clear the cost of an American president waging a political fight against the vast coalition of pro-Israel lobbying groups. In doing so, he exposed the limits of what the world’s most powerful man can do” when opposed by Israel partisans.

In 1991 Bush told Israel that the U.S. would not give Israel $10 million in loan guarantees until Israel stopped building settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. (Settlements are illegal under international law.*)

Bush stated: “I think the American people will strongly support me in this. I’m going to fight for it because I think this is what the American people want, and I’m going to do absolutely everything I can to back those members of the United States Congress who are forward-looking in their desire to see peace.”

The Israel lobby, especially the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), was outraged.

AIPAC head Thomas Dine, 1991. Dine said Bush’s action would be “a day that lives in infamy for the American pro-Israeli community.”

Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper reports: “Thomas Dine, the then-executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, declared that September 12 – when Bush announced he would tell Congress that the request for the guarantees must be deferred for 120 days – would be ‘a day that lives in infamy for the American pro-Israeli community.’

“Dine lamented that ‘this president did what no other president has done: He held a special press conference on this issue and challenged not just congressional efforts to proceed with the guarantees legislation,

Czech president Milos Zeman offered Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-nationalist government a fillip during his visit to Israel last week. He inaugurated a cultural and trade centre, Czech House, just outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls.

At the opening, he expressed hope it would serve as a precursor to his country relocating its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. If so, the Czech Republic would become the first European state to follow US President Donald Trump’s lead in moving the US embassy in May.

It is this kind of endorsement that, of late, has emboldened Mr Netanyahu’s government, the Israeli courts, Jerusalem officials and settler organisations to step up their combined assault on Palestinians in the Old City and its surrounding neighbourhoods.

Israel has never hidden its ambition to seize control of East Jerusalem, Palestinian territory it occupied in 1967 and then annexed, as a way of preventing a viable Palestinian state from emerging.

Israel immediately began building an arc of Jewish settlements on Jerusalem’s eastern flank to seal off its Palestinian residents from their political hinterland, the West Bank.

More than a decade ago, it consolidated its domination with a mammoth concrete wall that cut through East Jerusalem. The aim was to seal off densely populated Palestinian neighbourhoods on the far side, ensuring the most prized and vulnerable areas – the Old City and its environs – could be more easily colonised, or “Judaised”, as Israel terms it.

This area, the heart of Jerusalem, is where magnificent holy places such as the Al Aqsa mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre are to be found.

Under cover of the 1967 war, Israel ethnically cleansed many hundreds of Palestinians living near the Western Wall, a retaining wall of the elevated Al Aqsa compound that is venerated in Judaism. Since then, Israeli leaders have grown ever hungrier for control of the compound itself, which they believe is built over two long-lost Jewish temples.

Israel has forced the compound’s Muslim authorities to allow Jews to visit in record numbers, even though most wish to see the mosque replaced with a third Jewish temple. Meanwhile, Israel has severely limited the numbers of Palestinians who can reach the holy site.

The Anglophone Israel Lobby benefits from its ability to mold the media narrative while at the same time using financial incentives to corrupt the political class. For those who do not succumb to the corruption, there is always the option of direct pressure, which in the United States and Britain consists of targeted interference in the political system to remove critics either through promotion of scandal or by supporting well-funded alternative candidates in the following election. In the United States, this has led to the removal of a number of congressmen who had dared to criticize the Jewish state, terrifying the remainder into silence. All of this goes on with little or no debate in the media or in congress itself.

There are signs, however, that the general tolerance of Israeli misbehavior might be ending. The election of at least three Democratic Congresswomen Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who might be willing to discuss Israel in something less than worshipful ways is a miniscule shift in the alignment of the Democratic party, where Jewish money dominates, but it reflects the views of the party’s grass roots where a recent poll demonstrates that surveyed Democrats favor Israel over Palestine by a margin of only 2%, twenty-seven per cent versus twenty-five per cent with the remainder of responders favoring neither side.

Much more significant is last week’s announcement by Senator Rand Paul that he intends to place a “hold” on the current package of $38 billion in military aid to Israel, which means he can filibuster the issue in the Senate to delay its passage. Paul, who, like his father, is a skeptic regarding foreign aid in general, did not cite any specific issues connected to the aid package, but critics have long noted that Israel is in fact ineligible for any foreign aid from the United States because it has an undeclared nuclear arsenal consisting of at least 200 weapons. For that reason, providing aid to Israel is illegal under the Symington Amendment of 1961 as well as due to the fact that Tel Aviv has rejected signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT.

“The Lobby,” the four-part Al-Jazeera documentary that was blocked under heavy Israeli pressure shortly before its release, has been leaked online by the Chicago-based website Electronic Intifada, the French website Orient XXI and the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar.

The series is an inside look over five months by an undercover reporter, armed with a hidden camera, at how the government and intelligence agencies of Israel work with U.S. domestic Jewish groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), The Israel Project and StandWithUs to spy on, smear and attack critics, especially American university students who support the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. It shows how the Israel lobby uses huge cash donations, often far above the U.S. legal limit, and flies hundreds of members of Congress to Israel for lavish and unpaid vacations at Israeli seaside resorts, bribing the American lawmakers to do Israel’s bidding, including providing military aid such as the $38 billion (over 10 years) that was approved by Congress in 2016. It uncovers Israel’s sleazy character assassination of academics, activists and journalists, its well-funded fake grassroots activism, its manipulation of press coverage, and its ham-fisted attempts to destroy marriages, personal relationships and careers. The film highlights the efforts to discredit liberal Jews and Jewish organizations as tools of radical jihadists, referring, for example, to Jewish Voice for Peace as “Jewish Voice for Hamas” and claiming that many members of the organization are not actually Jewish. Israel recruits black South Africans into an Israeli front group called Stop Stealing My Apartheid, in a desperate effort to counter the reality of the apartheid state that Israel has constructed. The series documents Israel’s repeated and multifaceted interference in the internal affairs of the United States, including elections; efforts to discredit progressive groups such as Black Lives Matter that express sympathy for the Palestinians; and routine employment of Americans to spy on other Americans. Israel’s behavior is unethical and perhaps illegal. But don’t expect anyone in the establishment or either of the two ruling political parties to do anything about it. It is abundantly clear by the end of the series that they have been intimidated, discredited or bought off.